SCALES: ONCE UPON A TALE
by JessicaDwyer
Summary: THE STORY BEHIND RUMPELSTILTSKIN'S POWERS, WHERE THEY CAME FROM, AND WHY THERE IS ALWAYS A PRICE TO BE PAID FOR MAGIC.


**DISCLAIMER: THIS IS MY TAKE ON THE ORIGINS OF RUMPLE'S POWERS ON ONCE UPON A TIME. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE SHOW RUNNERS ARE GOING TO DO, BUT I COULDN'T GET THIS IDEA OUT OF MY HEAD, SO THERE YOU GO. I HOPE YOU LIKE MY IDEA. ALL THE ORIGINAL CHARACTERS BELONG TO ME BUT THE WORLD THEY INHABIT IS RIGHT OUTSIDE STORYBROOKE.**

**SCALES**

There's a balance to everything, and everything is balanced. It's a rule of the universe, whichever one you are in at the time; everything has its equal opposite. Good has bad, evil has innocence, fear has bravery. And each of those forces is drawn to one another by a need that's older than the oldest thing you know. And then of course there's the power each holds within. Oh yes even fear. Sometimes fear is the most powerful of all.

His story started with fear, but his power started with something else.

Once upon a time…

The dragons ruled. They were powerful creatures, majestic and gleaming things. Ancient, timeless…the dragons had been a part of history since it began. They hadn't started their reign evil but had become so powerful they'd grown bored. They started to toy with mankind as a way to keep occupied. It was a game of screaming, burning pawns and knights to them, a bloody chess board of death the size of the world.

Their magic was frightening and they wielded it not just at those below them but at each other. The dragons were greedy and grew to hate the sight of their own kind because it reminded them of what they had become…heartless beasts that laughed deeply at the sight of a man crying as his child burned to a cinder in front of him.

Decades, centuries, all past them by and one by one the dragons destroyed one another until at last only one of the true dragons remained. He had grown fat with the power of his own kind and his heart had grown as black as the night sky he could no longer fly in.

He'd taken to a mountain side, a cave lair where he could at least pretend he was still soaring. In the cave were his many treasures; all stolen and ill-gotten and all of his totems of power. His glinting golden green scales used to shine just as brightly as the coins and jewels he'd hoarded away. But now in the few torches he'd lit with a breath of flame, they were dulled and scarred.

The dragon would gaze out the side of the mountain and watch the small, tiny humans below. He remembered watching them cry in terror when he'd swoop down upon them so long ago. The joy in his roar would echo throughout the land and cause the very mountain he was within to shake. But that was so long ago that the joy was only a memory, and not a very clear one at that.

He had no way of knowing how long he'd been there watching, perhaps waiting for something to occur. Moments, years, centuries; he only knew he was growing older and tired. And then one day he saw her.

It was summer he was at least sure of that. His yellow eyes were actually hurting by how bright the sun seemed to shine down upon the green fields that stretched out along the valley beneath. He remembered them scorched, blackened. The sun was nearly all but blotted out by the smoke he and his brothers had caused. But his brothers had been dead long since, nearly half of them by his own tooth and claw and flame.

She was picking berries, a group of females with her. He'd never paid much attention to human females...granted some would taste better than others as it was with all that a dragon devoured. But this one, something within her seemed to glow like a beacon to his aged gaze.

Her eyes were the blue of the sapphires he'd gathered over the centuries, her hair the same golden sheen as his treasure. She was purity and light, shining even brighter than the sun and yet she did not burn his gaze as the sunlight did. She beckoned him like a beacon. The dragon saw within her everything that he was not, perhaps had never been. And when she smiled and her laughter wafted up to him on a honey scented breeze he knew he had to have her.

The spell was an old one, but then again not nearly as old as he. The power was all his now, and so that night his throat growled and rumbled the words that hadn't been spoken since he'd been able to fly. Scale and wing were replaced by skin and limb. Where once a dragon stood was now a man with raven black hair and skin that glinted golden in the torch light. His eyes though did not change and one look into their yellow gaze would speak of what he was. But he did not bother to care, he wanted only one thing that night and he would have it. Nothing had ever had power over him in so long that he could not resist her call. The sensation was something…new.

The girl, no more than 17 summers old had thought it a dream. The man seemed to appear out of the very shadows of her family's home. No one awakened when she let out the cry of surprise and for many moments the stranger merely stared at her, his yellow inhuman eyes unblinking. She found herself unable to move, to run. This was no normal man to be sure. His skin glinted with a shine like the armor of the king's soldiers, a hue of bronze or perhaps even gold in the light of the hearth fire. What was he, and why was he here?

When he moved to her bed she found she could still not move or run away. And soon she realized why he was there and what he wanted. Even though she couldn't move her eyes could still cry tears, and when he left he took with him the one thing she could never replace or give to another for the rest of her days.

The dragon returned to his treasure satisfied, his true form returned with the rising of the sun. He would not leave the mountain again but he would watch for the girl, sometimes noticing her out in the fields.

The girl herself did not speak to her parents of the strange dream. But it was only a month or so after that she realized that the specter had left her not truly alone. When her father discovered she was with child he beat her terribly, and called her a whore. He'd hoped the beating would have caused the bastard to be lost…but the child within was tenacious and too strong.

The bastard was born in a small hovel her father had built for her at her mother's bidding. It was a long, terrible birth. The village's mid-wife had never seen such a toll taking on a mother. And when the child emerged its skin was golden hued and it had eyes as yellow as a daffodil. The girl managed to live, but only just. And it was no surprise to her when the village ran her out of the town as soon as they learned of what her child appeared to be…a curse.

She did not go far though, she hadn't the strength. An old woman found her in the woods on the outskirts of the valley, still within view of the mountain. The girl was half starved and the babe was crying, starving as well. But the old woman took them in, even when she saw the glinting skin and devil eyes of the child. She was lonely and she had her own secrets which had led her to be hidden away.

She fed them both and kept them warm, the girl helping her mix the herbs and potions she sold to travelers for money and trade. Over the years that followed she watched the boy named Ingot grow into a strong young man as his mother grew ever weaker. By his fifteenth year it was clear that his mother would not live to see another summer, and the old woman prepared him for the worst.

Even though he was the cause of her exile, the cause of her slowly waning strength, the girl loved her son and dotted on him. He was all she had in the world and she would do anything to protect him. And so it was that no others had ever seen him over the years. The old woman had kept them both safely tucked away, with Ingot out of sight whenever a customer was there.

But the day came when the old woman knew the girl was soon to be no more. And Ingot, who had his mother's light hair with his father's gold skin, was not to be consoled. He raged like the dragon whose blood flowed in his veins and the old woman asked the pale girl to tell her son the truth of who his father was…for even the girl knew now what had lain with her the night her son had been conceived.

As she lay there on what was surely to be her death bed the girl told the sobbing youth the tragedy of his birth. Ingot shook his head not believing that his father was a monster who had taken his mother using magic and force, that he himself was the cause of his mother's death as sure as if he'd strangled he life from her with his own hands.

But his mother simply smiled, tears falling from her still clear blue eyes. "You were a gift my love, not a curse. Never a curse." Her pale hand had reached up and touched his golden cheek. And with a final breath her hand fell away from him, never to touch him again.

The cry that issued from Ingot's lips shook the mountains around him, causing the dragon to stir and to wonder if another of his brothers had found their way back to challenge him. But there was no sound of wings or scent of fire upon the air. Yet something he knew had awakened was coming as sure as the next day's dawn.

Ingot and the old woman buried the girl beneath a flowering cherry tree near the house. The air around the boy seemed to darken the closer it came to him, as if the shadows sought him out, even in the light of day.

The old woman was a wise creature of the land, she saw what was within the boy, and it would not be denied its release. His path had been decided when he was born. He was the image of his birth, a child as golden as the sun but within him a power born of darkness and hellfire. His soul was balancing on the edge of the precipice and the gods help those who would cause him to fall.

The need for vengeance would burn him up from the inside out and as she watched him the old woman saw those flames start to show through his golden skin and leak out of his yellow gaze. He would pace the grassy floor of the forest around their home, his feet leaving scorched earth behind where his steps would fall. She knew what he must do, but she was loathe to do it for he'd become a son to her, or as near a grandchild as ever she'd see. Yet it was his path, his destiny that she'd seen in her dreams the past days since they'd laid his mother in the ground.

"You seek vengeance on the creature that beget you and had your mother bear you into this world." The old woman said the next day. Ingot had nodded once, his eyes flaring up at the thought, unholy as they stared back at her unblinking. "Tis a beast that is older than the oldest thing, but filled with so much power it has trapped itself within itself. To kill it you need something as old as it is. You need the claw of another dragon."

Ingot knew well enough that his father was the last of the full bloodied dragons. "They are all dead, as well as he should have been." He told her, a growl in his throat as he spat on the ground. The earth sizzled where it landed.

"To be sure," The old woman said, "But just because something is dead doesn't mean it is no longer a danger. Far from it." And so she told him of the graveyard of scales. The place where the bodies of many a dragon had fallen from the sky during one of the last and greatest battles they had fought against each other.

Ingot was to go and find a claw from one of the creatures, break it free from the skeleton and bring it back to her. And so for a 30 days he traveled to the spot where the valley was as black as night from the fires of the dragons breath. Nothing would grow there and nothing would live. And all around where the giant bones of the creatures whose death only beget more death. Ingot stared hard at the yellowed and faded white of the bones. The boy could not help the awe he felt looking at them for they were huge creatures and knowing that his father was the last, that he beat all of them caused the first sense of fear he'd ever known in his life.

But even more powerful than the fear was the image that flashed within his mind of his mother's smile and the knowledge that it was gone forever. Ingot moved forward and grasped the sharp claw of one of the larger skeletons. He ripped it away with one swipe of his arm, his fingers growing sticky with his own blood as the talon cut into his flesh…the only thing in the world that was able to wound him.

He returned to the old woman and gave her the claw. Over the next many days she worked and carved and chanted. Ancient magic that not many would remember, nor have the power to control she wielded, asking the gods the true name of Ingots father. The gods granted her request and when all as finished she gave the boy the only weapon he would need. It was a dagger, dragons bone and etched in the blade the name of the one it was to slay.

Ingot thanked her knowing what he had to do without even asking. The next day he left, heading for the mountain lair of his father and that night the old woman died, her final breath carrying the name of the boy made of darkness and light.

The journey was hard but Ingot would not be denied. His feet carried him surely up the mountainside and into the chamber that no one had entered for centuries. Ingot was not shocked, nor frightened by the charred bodies that lined the walls. Warriors or fools, he didn't care…they were no concern of his. His goal lay ahead…he could hear him breathing.

His father lay in the middle of a room surrounded by gold, jewels, and death, the remnants of those Ingot had passed on his way into the cavern. The dragon was huge and barely moving himself on his bed of coins, various sizes and shapes and from different parts of the world. But he'd never again see those distant shores that he'd plundered and burned, never again.

Yellow eyes met their match across the room and the dragons black lips pulled back in a smile. "So you finally came." The voice was more growl than words. Ingot didn't speak, waiting for the monster to attack. He'd never been in a fight before, much less had to defend himself against a creature such as he faced now but he would not flee.

But the dragon didn't so much as move one muscle. He knew the boy in front of him was his son, sensed It as any father would. And he was proud of the rage within him and he welcomed what was to come. He saw his death within his child as well as his life continuing on, even when he was dust. That was his sons curse and gift to him.

He watched as the boy pulled the claw dagger from the belt at his waist and saw in surprise his name etched into the blade. Not many would know the sort of magic that could cut into dragon bone, fewer would know his name. He wondered if he'd been the one to end the creature whose corpse it had belonged to. Most likely he had.

"You die this day beast." Ingot's voice was an eerie match to the creatures as it echoed though the cavern. "In my mother's name I end you."

The dragon still did not move, but his smile grew larger. Even though the boy would grace him with his own curse of death, he was not without his own sort of vengeance. Such was his black heart; he would not end his time without a last stab at the one who felled him.

"You have every right for your vengeance boy. I am proud to see the fire within you, even though it is the form of your mother's people…not mine." The dragon's eyes burned into his and Ingot stopped in his tracks as though the creature held him there within his large hand. "You are the one who shall take my power with the blow you strike me down with…all that I have and have been will be yours. But such power comes with a price as everything in this world does, as all magic forever shall. My curse is my power, and I give both to you. Take your vengeance half breed, for the honor of your mother and for the ending of your father."

Ingot felt himself released from whatever had held him. He let out a yell of rage, his hand gripping the hilt of the dagger tightly and he leapt towards the creature. The dagger found its mark true, as if by a force all its own, slicing through the creatures scales and body to the hilt and impaling his heart.

Black blood flowed from the wound as the dragon's final cry of flame issued forth, the heat blasting against Ingot, but not burning him. The blood kept flowing in a torrent of warm black and red, along Ingots arm and soaking his clothing and the dirt floor below. The dragon's heavy head fell to the ground and he shuddered his last words, a mere whisper in the singed air "At last…"

Ingot pulled the dagger free from the creature, stumbling backwards and nearly slipping in the blood that had pooled beneath it. He took a breath and then another. What happened now? His eyes trailed the walls and floor of the cavern, realizing that all the treasure it held was now his. All of it was his.

The dagger in his hand started to grow warmer suddenly, nearly burning his flesh…something he'd never truly felt before. He glanced down, trying to drop it from his grasp but was unable to do so. As he watched the dragons blood began to move, the onyx like droplets forming into shapes upon the blade, obscuring the creatures true name and seemingly forming another. A shudder ripped through Ingot's chest and he fell to his knees as a wave of pain shot through him. "My curse is my power…and I give both to you." The dragon's voice was a whisper that was nearly deafening as it echoed through the cavern.

Ingot knew then that it was the magic. The dragon's magic was burning into him with heat of a thousand thousand bonfires. His fingers gripped the handle of the dagger so tightly he wasn't sure which would break first, the bones of his hand or the hilt of his weapon. He screamed as the fire within him blazed through every nerve, through every fiber that weaved him into being. The power was too much…he was half a mortal…he couldn't contain such magic within him.

His wide yellow eyes looked down and saw what at last the dragon's blood had spelled out onto the blade of his dagger. "I N G O T" had been etched deeply there and once he saw the name the fire within him abated. He fell backwards gasping, laying in the pool of his father's blood.

"You have my power and magic now…but all comes with a price." He heard the voice whisper once more. "And you will learn that in time it is very high. You will wish to give it away…and that will be the day that debt is paid and another will take your place. The dagger you used to destroy me is now the key to that power my slayer, my son. Guard it well for it is now your burden to bear…" And then the voice was gone.

Ingot learned quickly the wisdom of the dragon's words. Yes he used the riches he'd earned to build himself a castle and lived as a man with such power would. He toyed with the villagers of the town that had once been the home to his mother and her family. They grew to fear him and even though his skin and hair were as golden as the sunrise, he garnered the name "The Dark One" for that is all they saw within him when he appeared.

His power was such that he would bring crops to ruin and make hillsides crumble down upon homes. Any of the light that Ingot's mother had passed onto him was soon snuffed out by his desire for vengeance on these people he saw just as guilty as the monster he'd destroyed…the monster he was himself turning into.

And so it was that one young man discovered the one weakness "The Dark One" had after years of his torment. The man had traveled many miles and found a seer who told him of a dagger that held the evil ones name. It was the source of controlling him or destroying him, all it would take is someone brave or foolish enough to go search for it.

Taking up the challenge the young man did as he was instructed and by fate or chance found the dagger hidden in the heart of "The Dark Ones" lair, a castle built on the side of a mountain. Ingot's rage was great but the young man defeated him, plunging the dagger into his chest after a mighty battle.

Ingot fell to the floor, his black blood spreading out beneath him like a pair of wings. He could hear the chuckle of laughter softly in his ear and knew that his father awaited him. He was growing so cold…so very cold. He'd never been cold before. Ingot's yellow eyes glance up at the dark haired young man who'd beaten him. He stood over him with the dagger clutched in his hand.

Ingot could see the fear start to pool in the young man's green eyes, eyes that had started to change to a yellow hue and he grinned, tasting his own blood on his lips. "There's always a price…" he said and those words were his last.

The dagger passed to many more wielders over the years to follow, each of them realizing the terrible debt to be paid for the power it granted. The power though was slowly diminished with each death that gave birth to a new "Dark One." It was a balance that had to be kept and a price that had to be paid.

And so it was that one day the gift of the curse was given to a man who had already paid so much for the sins of his life, to save the one thing he loved best in the world. But he most of all knew that there was always a price to be paid for anything in this world or even the next. Especially when magic was the currency of the realm.

**THE END OF THIS TALE, THE BEGINNING OF ANOTHER.**


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